Category: Roosevelt / Central

With so many new breweries and tap houses emerging throughout Downtown Phoenix and adjacent neighborhoods, it’s hard to believe it was once hard to find a wide selection of craft beer in the center of the city. Nevertheless, that was the case as recently as 2012 when Angels Trumpet opened in Evans Churchill. Angels Trumpet is not a brewery, and it’s not really a pub either. It identifies as an alehouse and offers a larger space and beer selection than most pubs. Most importantly, it was a harbinger of an emerging craft beer culture that is now taking hold.Continue reading “Angels Trumpet Ale House”→

There are few streets in Phoenix that have undergone as rapid a transformation as Fifth Street, specifically the block between Roosevelt and Garfield. The changes aren’t necessarily physical. None of the historic houses has been torn down, but there has been a change in character from a Bohemian block with a DIY feel to a new status that has yet to be fully defined. Where Fifth Street meets Roosevelt, five blocks east of the Roosevelt / Central light rail station, one of the first of the new arrivals is Taco Chelo, part of the Blocks of Roosevelt Row development.Continue reading “Taco Chelo”→

As the show “Portlandia” wraps up its final season, fans will inevitably look back on favorite moments during the program’s eight-year run. One top contender is likely to be the “Put a Bird on it” sketch in which characters Bryce and Lisa decorate every item imaginable with an avian theme. In the Evans Churchill neighborhood of Phoenix, Songbird Coffee & Tea House has put a bird on the concept of the local coffee house. Differentiating itself while living up to its full name, Songbird puts as much emphasis on tea as it does on coffee and espresso drinks.Continue reading “Songbird Coffee & Tea House”→

Long ago, the only place for pizza in Downtown Phoenix was a lonely Pizza Hut on First Street. The area was so desolate that the chain pizzeria reportedly wouldn’t even deliver to some addresses a few blocks away. That Pizza Hut is still present on First Street, but in recent years, the surrounding neighborhoods have become home to half a dozen high quality pizza restaurants of local origin. One of those, Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana, is situated directly across the street from its franchised counterpart. Continue reading “Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana”→

For a society supposedly obsessed with brevity and starved for time, we seem to have an unexpected and enduring fascination with word games. Scrabble, the classic, now exists in digital formats for smartphones, tablets, and Facebook. The newer alternative, Words with Friends, provides a similar game with a social component added. Given the widespread enthusiasm for arranging letter tiles on game boards or touch screens, it should not be surprising to see a restaurant, NCounter, using the alphabet as part of its logo and decor. Continue reading “Daily Jam (formerly NCounter)”→

The first lesson Phoenicians should learn about local geography is that numbered streets are on the east side of the city and that avenues are on the west side. The second lesson might be that if a street has a presidential name, it runs east-west through downtown. The Vig Fillmore, a central location for a small, locally-based group of restaurants, combine both lessons into one. Its site, the historic Cavness House, has an address on Fourth Avenue but the restaurant takes its name from the intersecting street named for antebellum one-termer Millard Fillmore. Continue reading “The Vig Fillmore”→

The transformation of Roosevelt Row over the past decade seems a lot like a three-act play. In the first act, small businesses and art galleries pioneered in a neglected area and adapted neglected vintage buildings. In the second act, the district received attention and recognition from city government, resulting in a streetscape project that added bike lanes and widened sidewalks to create opportunities for patio dining. Carly’s Bistro has not only survived but improved during the first two acts. Now, it’s only logical to wonder what will happen in the third act.Continue reading “Carly’s Bistro”→

Farmers markets are seemingly everywhere these days, but one of the longest-running ones is the Phoenix Public Market at the north end of Downtown. The open-air market, which just celebrated its 12th birthday, has one feature that few can claim: an adjacent restaurant that celebrates the bounty of the market and locally produced food seven days a week. The Phoenix Public Market Cafe, sometimes also known as the Cafe at the Phoenix Public Market, operates just east of the outdoor market site, three blocks south of the Roosevelt / Central light rail station.Continue reading “Phoenix Public Market Cafe”→

There’s been a lot of change on Roosevelt Row lately, and not everyone is happy about it. Although a new wave of construction has realized dreams of residential density near transit, there has been a resistance of sorts, based on perceptions of gentrification and a desire to preserve old buildings scattered amid vacant lots. A frequent gathering place for this resistance was Jobot, the coffee house and cafe formerly on Fifth Street. When a rent dispute caused Jobot to vacate its home at the end of 2016, there was even more outcry over the rapid transformation of the area.Continue reading “Jobot”→